The wheels of academic publishing often grind very slowly. Particularly with collaborative projects. I have just received the proofs of my chapter for Brill’s Companion to Sieges in the Ancient Mediterranean, which is due for publication in December.
The editors of the volume first contacted me in late March 2017 with an invitation to write a “Roman” chapter to sit between their existing Early Republican and Late Imperial chapters. As I then had a week’s annual leave coming up for Easter, I accepted. There were some points raised by Joshua Levithan’s book on Roman Siege Warfare that I wanted to address and some statements in The Encyclopedia of the Roman Army’s entry on “Siege Warfare” that I didn’t really go along with, so this seemed an ideal opportunity to state my case. I quickly ordered a copy of Yann Le Bohec’s La guerre romaine to get the latest Continental perspective, as well.
I decided to address Caesarian siege warfare, as our existing primary sources describe 29 sieges (a reasonable number for methodical analysis) carried out during the period from 58 BC to 45 BC. It was a tight schedule, but my chapter was submitted on 1 May 2017.
Luckily, two years down the line, there hasn’t been any new research on this topic, so I’m confident that my findings can stand. But at an estimated $155 per copy, I wonder how many people will be settling down in their armchairs to read my chapter this December.
